As an artist, my website has multiple applications:

I intend it to be a second business card: it is a quick and very efficient way for people to look at my work without sending expensive slides or photos

It is a great way to get my work known by many art lovers whom I might not be able to reach any other way

It can potentially be a way for me to sell work

Whichever way you choose to use your website, one of the most important things you need to do is promote the site yourself to increase traffic. A website unfortunately will not automatically generate fabulous sales and bring you great fame solely because it exists. The good news is that there are plenty of inexpensive and free ways to promote your site and make sure it is seen by all your adoring fans.

The Google Game

Google uses software known as spiders to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to its index. When you search Google, the search engine looks up its index, and the results you see are the best matches between your query and Googles index, according to Google. Technically, you dont have to submit your site to get indexed, it will be automatically done when Google crawls the web. If you just launched your site and it does not appear on Google, it may be for following reasons (*from Google Webmasters guidelines):

The site is not well connected with other sites through an inbound linking structure.

The site launched after Googles most recent crawl was completed.

The site was temporarily unavailable at the time of crawling or an error was received. You can use

Google Sitemaps to see if the Google crawlers received errors when trying to crawl your site. Yahoo and Google are so popular and there has been such an increase in web traffic, that it may take months before you site shows up through their search engine. It took my site about one month and a half to show up on Googles index! You can speed up the process and improve your ranking by taking very simple steps:

Naming your pages with relevant names: every page on your website should have a relevant name: this is one of the things that search engines look for. So instead of naming a page mypage, name it Isabelle Garbanis figurative sculptures

Meta tags: Meta tags are in the HTML code and are not seen in the browser window but they are seen by search engines. Your pages should contain a meta tag with a short description of your site. Make sure the description is related to what you think people will search under. So if you paint Rembrandt-style portraits, make sure your description mentions that fact

Most folks agree now that keyword meta tags are no longer useful and are mostly ignored.

If you are unsure what keywords people might use to search a site just like yours, Google has a great tool: under the advertising programs, you can create a Google account for free. Go to their Adwords page, and look under explore Search Queries. There you can type any keywords, find related keywords, and see which ones are most frequently used. You can then use these keywords within the content description of your site, and you can make sure that those keywords also appear throughout the text of your site.

Submit your URL: if you are a non commercial site, both Google and yahoo let you submit your sites name. There is no guarantee that your site will be indexed or how long it will take however!

Make a sitemap: Google lets you submit a sitemap which is essentially a list of all the links on your site. This makes it easier for Google to index your site, and might speed up the indexing process.

Google local: if you are a commercial site, you can register with Google local. This may take up to 6 or 8 weeks and does not guarantee that your site will show up on the main index, but it may bring some local traffic

In addition, Google gives the following advice to webmasters:

Keep the links on any given page to a reasonable number (less than 100)

Check for broken links and correct HTML

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your web site. Most search engine spiders see your site in much the same way as Lynx would.

Is your code search engine friendly?

There are several things to avoid and several you must do to have a search engine friendly site:

Avoid having an all Flash site and avoid having an HTML site with all frames. Neither are very friendly to search engines. It is better to have at least one page that is all text or mostly text, and add the dog and pony show within the site.

Be sure all your graphics have the alt tag (alternate text), with descriptive, relevant alternate text

Make link names as relevant to your content as possible: this is the same issues as your page titles. Naming your link with a name that actually describes your content or has keywords that will be used to find you

The Web is still FREE!

Even if you avoid doing any of the things mentioned above, there are plenty of ways to make sure your website is seen by many out there.

You probably have heard this before: the key to visibility is LINKS LINKS LINKS! What that means is that the more links point to your site, the better your visibility will be, not only in getting your site indexed with search engines, but also in making sure your site rank high in the search engine results.

There are basically 2 types of links that are useful:

Incoming link: a site that links to you but you do not link to them

Reciprocal link: you point to a site, and it also points to you

The strongest links are incoming links: theyre equivalent to a referral, without any strings attached. Someone links to you because your content is good. These links are going to happen for you the same way networking happens: you will have to slowly and carefully build relationships with other sites owners and eventually they will help you, basically because they like your site or you!

A good way to start building one way links is to submit your site to open directories. Open directories are mostly managed by human editors, who will look through your site and decide whether or not they want to list your site on their directory. Remember to submit your site in the most relevant category. A great place to find a lot of free open directories is:

http://www.onewaytextlink.com/

They list hundreds of different free one way directories, and paid one way links.

Local and state arts councils are another great source of one way links. Most are free and let you publish your contact information, along with your web site. The advantage of these registries is that these sites are probably already indexed by Google and yahoo, thereby increasing your chances of getting indexed yourself. Be a good sport and register in a geographical area that makes sense to you!

Your alumni association probably also has some sort of directory or art registry where you can participate and list your site for free. Basically think about any community association you can join that might offer free listings on its site: this can a local business association, a community group, an art collective, etc.

Write and submit articles about art related issues that might be helpful to your fellow artists. This can be anything from a great technique that you have just learned, to a review of a product that you use and find helpful. Press releases also fall into that category: are you staging a benefit show that your local press might print and post on their site?

Be helpful to your community: if you offer free tips and tricks, or free tools to your fellow artists, word will eventually get around that your site has valuable information, increasing your sites popularity and making it show up on the first page on the search engine results.

My overall advice is to make sure your site has quality information, be respectful of others, keep working and be patient!

The Web is for sale!

If all else fails, and if you have extra cash, you can always buy traffic to your site. Using Google Adwors or Overture for example, you can place a bid on certain keywords. Depending on who else bids that day and how much money you are willing to bid, you can appear at the very top of the Google search engine. When a user clicks on your site, you pay Google the bid amount. You can set a daily or monthly budget to limit what you spend within a month.

Remember that a website is a tool not the answer to all your prayers. You need to promote yourself as an artist in many different ways: a website is a great way for the world to see your work, how the world finds you is up to you!